Flipbook Versus PDF: Ready To Rumble?

Flipbook versus PDF documents could be the next intriguing battle of the publishing platforms.

PDF’s are becoming increasingly popular among marketers and content creators, especially in professions that demand an air of authority.

And whilst pdf documents do provide publishers with a platform to produce some stunning content that is both visually engaging and captivating, HTML5 flipbook technology threatens to topple pdf’s off their perch.

Pros and cons of pdf files

One of the main reasons online publishers post content in PDF format is because it protects their intellectual property from being plagiarized. The culture of scraping content from sites to use on third party sites has become problematic and it is often the case that the scraped content ranks higher than the original which is unfair.

PDF documents are designed to replicate print documents in the digital space. Therefore if you want to publish content in adjacent columns, pdf files do a better job of this than a Word Document.

However, that is pretty much the end of advantages using pdf files offer. The software has more flaws than benefits.

One of the biggest problems with publishing content in a pdf is they are not user-friendly. And when user-experience is high on the agenda of search engines, pdf files are more likely to harm your SEO rankings than they are to improve them.

PDF files are formatted to fit an A4 printed page rather than the screen size of the device being used by the user. They do not adapt to responsive sites very well. As a result they are difficult to navigate without having to scroll horizontally and vertically.

Furthermore, when publishers print content in columns, readers have to scroll down to finish reading the left had column and then scroll back up to start reading the right hand column. It makes for a poor user-experience.

PDF files are also notorious for slow load times – another factor that leaves a bad impression on end-users. Most internet user will not hang around for longer than 3 or 4 seconds for a webpage to load.

Although PDF’s do not offer the best user-experience, they are the preferred choice of documents for researchers and academics and therefore rank well in search engines based on the trust and authority of the institutions that adopt them.

However, this is not the case for everyone, and online businesses looking to improve citation scores are not afforded the same advantages as authority sites in search engine results.

Pros and cons of flipbooks

Flipbooks resolve many of the issues that put pdf’s at a disadvantage. Thanks to HTML5, flipbook technology is know more user-friendly and can be integrated with Google Analytics so you can measure performance and improve content.

Flipbooks are interactive and provide an immersive experience which is unique and user-friendly. Providing your content is good enough, flipbooks are likely to receive more engagement than a standard pdf file.

You can also add a diverse range of multimedia files into a flipbook, which comes to life with digital animation. Although you can do this with pdf’s as well, the flipbook technology makes the user-experience more exciting and interesting to use.

One of the main reasons for that is because flipbooks are responsive and can be used on multiple devices, including mobile handsets. They are a perfect combination for tablets that are easy to carry around, but have screens that are big enough to access content without needing to scroll.

Furthermore, interactive functions allow users to zoom in and make the text bigger and easier to digest, or to take a closer look at the details of images. Sound effects also make it sound as though they are turning the pages of a handheld print publication.

Flipbook versus PDF

So as you can see flipbooks offer a far greater range of benefits than pdf’s. But that’s not all. You create a flipping book HTML5 from a pdf file, so there is little extra work for you to do to enjoy all the benefits of a flipbook.

In just a few easy steps, marketers can transform an un-user-friendly document into a captivating and engaging flipbook that has the potential to retain readers and increase conversions. And that all can be done with a simple and free flipping book software.